Helana Marie Boutros is our Woman of the Week, nominated for her doctoral work at McMaster University focusing on health, cultural, and sensory anthropology. She earned her Master's in Public Health, specializing in Indigenous Health, at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation will examine Coptic women’s lived experiences of spiritual health and how those collective experiences frame and shape their broader encounters with mental health imaginaries and biomedicine in the West. We asked Helana to share with you what led her to be interested in the work that she is doing.
"Growing up, I looked up to a lot of women in my life, my maternal grandmother and my mother especially. I think that there is something very special about both of them, and I continue to admire their faith. I had a sense of a private inner spiritual life of women that we don’t talk about, and that was something that drew me to the idea of preserving Coptic women's stories, but also the idea that in Coptic scholarship, the focus on women is very, very scant. We have some literature focusing on women in late antiquity. We also have literature focusing on immigrant Coptic women. Perhaps something from married Coptic women or Coptic women and the politics, for example, of singing within our Coptic Church. But we don't have any lived experience or preservation of stories regarding Coptic women’s engagement with, practice and pursuit of the concept of “spiritual health.” That connection to health is very, very limited within Coptic studies. We might have a thesis or a dissertation here and there on mental health, but the idea of spiritual health is less punctuated, and I wanted to offer more of my disciplinary tendency - since I do come from a health sciences and public health background - into Coptic studies.
"I think the idea of spiritual health is at an important juncture for Copts specifically. We are inheritors of a rich monastic tradition in which our desert fathers and mothers spoke extensively on spiritual health and illness. Our patristic writings also have covered a wide range of topics that explored one’s personhood, and by extension, spiritual health from an anthropological and ontological lens. While our writings in our past have been actively engaged with, the engagement between the past and present (the lived experiences of women today) in their pursuit of spiritual health is quite scant. Exploring this work is especially important for me because I’m very passionate about health, illness and distress. The current imaginary of mental health, both in discourse and praxis, has increasingly converged with biomedicine, namely through the medicalization of everyday life and the “abnormal becoming the new normal.” These social shifts, as a training anthropologist, are quite fascinating to me. Yet, I don’t want to engage with these imaginaries in isolation, but include Coptic women in the broader dialogue as well. While “reforming health” and “thinking differently about health” may often be conceptualized, materialized, and actualized within the ethos of policy and frontline public health, I truly believe that writing and preserving stories in an authentic and beautiful way are as tantamount to encouraging a cognitive shift in how we think about health, illness and distress.
"In examining these considerations, my question is very exploratory: what are the practices, strategies, and experiences of Coptic women in the Greater Toronto Area as they pursue spiritual health, and how do these collective experiences shape and frame their encounters the imaginaries of mental health and biomedicine in the West?
"Part of my approach in examining this work is taking on “a sensory ethnographic approach.” That basically means that I’ll be paying special attention to the life of the senses in the life of my community while I’m taking fieldnotes and synthesizing knowledge together. Why is this important? As any Orthodox Christian would probably know, the Orthodox Christian tradition engages all five senses in its liturgical life. Our senses are especially important in the way we worship and the way we engage with each other. Anthropologists would accurately assert that the life of the senses are actually a window into the cultural values and stories of a community. For this reason, I will be attentive to the senses at play in this research, and make note of any phenomenon that we, as Coptic women, have personally taken for granted. I hope a sensory flavour to this dissertation can encourage future Coptic scholars to take a sensory approach to their scholarship as well.
"As you probably can tell, this work means a lot to me. Yet, to say that I’m entirely immersed in my doctoral work would not be entirely accurate. I think fruitful and community-based scholarship cannot be done without immersing yourself in community and taking your faith seriously first. This is why I’m very intentional in being immersed in the life of my own Coptic community - whether it is through our liturgical life, friendships, discipleship, or service. If anything, this life outside of my dissertation is actually the backdrop that informs it. I see my dissertation as a gift back to my own community. I can only give them this gift if I know them well, and love them intimately. For gifts, after all, reflect how much we know our loved ones. To be known is to be loved, right?
"And this work is certainly not easy. There have been many seasons so far in my PhD where I have hibernated and isolated myself - but those were the same seasons where God has gifted me with a grace that I didn’t deserve. Whether it is through a forest walk with our family dog, cooking or baking something to ease my spirits, a poem I wrote, or watercolour tree painting I did, I found that God grants me inspiration for my dissertation in reserves of rest, paradoxes, and creativity. And through pain, He has given me words to pray through (it was pain that compelled me to write my first poetry collection, “His Prodigal Bride”). God has also granted me heavenly friends throughout this journey. St. Macrina the Younger especially keeps me company while I write. We have a beautiful sisterhood.
"I don’t think this work would be possible without proper guidance, mentorship and discipleship. My PhD supervisor, Dr. Mat Savelli, has taught me to maintain a curious, humble, critical, and embodied gaze throughout my own dissertation. Without his support and critical eye, I wouldn’t be here today. He has helped me sharpen my writing and ideas immensely. I continue to learn from him and I hope, in the future, I can provide the same mentorship and guidance to thesis students."
As always, we asked our Woman of the Week, Helana Marie Boutros, to tell us about her morning routine:
“My quiet time with God in the morning is quite intimate, so I’m not entirely comfortable sharing that. However, I will say that I’m very much a morning person. I love to wake up early and work away or do my readings in the morning. Waking up early is what recuperates me; there is a peace and rest I feel in the quiet of dawn. My mama (yes, I have beautiful best friends in my life, but if “bestest” could EVER be a word, she is my bestest friend) is also a morning person, so the mornings are usually the time where we sit in the kitchen and spend some quality time together over a freshly brewed cup of coffee.”
Thank you, Helana!